Skip to main content

Retirement blues: Steven Soderbergh's Logan Lucky

 Daniel Craig, Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Katie Holmes. Dir. Steven Soderbergh, Bleecker Street, 2017


Sometime in the early 'Teens, director Steven Soderbergh retired. His retirement proved difficult to discern, since he immediately proceeded to direct all the seasons of The Knick, with Clive Owen. Reiring again after that, Soderbergh then reemerged to direct Logan Lucky in 2017. Please, sir, for movies this good, and for their fans, please stop retiring.

Daniel Craig is a redneck safecracker who gets himself arrested and sent to jail as an alibi for when he and his cousins, Adam Driver and Channing Tatum, rob the cash room at the Coca Cola 600. They plan to rob a much smaller race, but a scheduling conflict forces them to go for the bigger score.

I don't want to say much more than that, except Tatum seems to do his best work for Soderbergh. He and Driver and Craig are hilarious together. I will also say Logan Lucky is sort of Soderbergh's redneck-remake of his own Ocean's 11, especially the climax, and that this is Soderbergh in his Informant! mode, the ensemble cast and quirky plot feeling Cohens-lite as much as Ocean's Anything.

Not an unseen masterpiece, Logan Lucky IS an underseen, good Soderbergh film. I'll add it to the 'Win' column on this haul. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No Return:Stanley Kramer's IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD

 IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD. Spencer Tracy, Ethel Merman, Milton Berle, Mickey Rooney, Sid Caesar. Dir. Stanley Kramer, MGM, 1963 I do not generally write about films I stop watching halfway. What's the point? I either have nothing positive to say about it or was in the wrong mood. In both cases I'm ignorant of its full length to perhaps do it justice. In the case of Stanley Kramer's 1963 comedy smash, however, I feel compelled to make an exception.  My problem with the movie is not my mood, nor disappointment because it's not the movie I once heard. In fact, my biggest problem is that I haven't heard it described in glowing terms, or any, since I was about 9. See, IAMMMMW used to air anually on one or another of the networks, often in December. My parents didn't care for it and never watched it, but my friends watched anytime it aired and talked about it in rapturous terms. Until about 9-10 years old, when it seemed to drop out of conversation, or conv...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fill in the '80s: Peter Bogdonovich's Mask

 Cher, Eric Stoltz, Sam Elliott, Laura Dern. Dir. Peter Bogdonovich, Universal, 1985 As I've noted, my movie addiction starts with my parents taking me to see Disney's Bedknobs&Broomsticks when I was four years old. I spent the '70s seeing any movie I could, mostly Disney and other kid-friendly fare, peppered by notable exceptions like The Sting, Jaws, and The Outlaw Josey Wales. In the '80s, my teenage and young adult years, I began to see more adult-themed movies and started watching with a somewhat more critical eye. I have since compiled a list of every '80s movie I've seen.  It's a long list. All the usual suspects are on it. The classic '80s fare, the Purple Rains and Red Dawns and Top Guns and so forth predominate. Whenever I go out scavenging, I always keep an eye out for '80s titles I have not seen or have but do not own. I regard the unseen ones as pieces of a picture puzzle I've been filling in for 40 years. Last night, I fitted ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fraternal Twins:Michael Mann's HEAT & THE INSIDER

  HEAT Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Val Kilmer, Jon Voigt, Tom Sizemore, Diane Venora. Dir. Michael Mann, Warner Bros., 1995 On twitter I'm one of a few dozen people tweeting their four favorite movies for a given year, one year per each successive day. We started, as far as I know, at 1959. Today we're tweeting for 2014. (Mine:BOYHOOD, LEGO MOVIE, FURY, INTERSTELLAR.) No one says much, but years perceived as especially good get shoutouts, which means 1999 got its share of love. IN '99, as I recall, THE INSIDER made all the critical lists, did the awards-season tour, & movie fans, those I talked to, waxed rhapsodic. I also recall establishment critics of the time loving THE INSIDER & being divided on HEAT. In the '99 lists I saw, THE INSIDER is no longer part of the 1999 discourse. HEAT never goes out of style on twitter. Everyday I see tweets of action stills, onesheets, whatever, leading me to tweet the movies I wish film twitter would STOP talking about ten d...
Post a Comment
Read more